Next week will be nearly as busy as this week, as I will be speaking in both Houston and Austin on issues generally revolving around the December 1, 2015 amendments to the discovery rules in federal court.

I have posted previously on the Dallas and San Antonio sites, but next Wednesday morning I will be presenting my Federal Update paper at the State Bar Advanced Civil Trial seminar at the Westin Oaks in Houston. The paper focuses on the effect of the new federal discovery rules, drawing on Professor Lonny Hoffman and Anna Rotman's paper on this topic from the prior year, with a liberal helping of Fifth Circuit cases courtesy of David Coale's 600camp.com weblog.

Which is a good thing because the next day I will be on a panel with David and U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez of San Antonio in Austin, FRCP 26 and New Discovery Trends, which will be drawing on, let me see, Prof. Hoffman's paper again. (Now how did that happen?) The panel is part of UT Law's 39th Annual Page Keeton Civil Litigation conference, which will be held October 29-30 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin. You can see the program agenda and register online at www.utcle.org/conferences/PL15.

To paraphrase President Kennedy, the latter will be the best explanation of recent developments in federal discovery rules with the possible exception of when a UH student leaned into Professor Hoffman's office last week and said "Dean, what's up with all these new rules?" (Professor Hoffman is shown in hard core law prof mode testifying before the House Judiciary Committee three weeks ago on pending legislation involving the removal statutes. He's against it, but appreciated the bottled water).

In beautiful San Antonio this evening prepping for the first of three presentations of my Federal Update paper tomorrow morning at the State Bar's Advanced Civil Trial seminar. This year it deals primarily with the upcoming FRCP discovery rule amendments ("proportionality" anyone?) as well as a selected set of interesting (or horrifying, depending on your practice) recent Fifth Circuit opinions, enlivened with cameos by Judge Reinhold and Rob Lowe. I have to extend thanks to Professor Lonny Hoffman and Anna Rotman of Houston for their paper presented last year on the upcoming rule changes, which is a great explanation of what the amendments do, as well as David Coale's www.600camp.com weblog, which is mandatory reading for civil practitioners in the Fifth Circuit.
The Bar has asked presenters to conclude with a set of "takeaways" at the end of each presentation to recap the most important parts, which has really been helpful in assembling my slides - made me think about what was the most important, and ways to get it across better. To give readers a feel for the topics I am focusing on this year, they are:

Proportionality - Learn it. Know it. Live it.

Arbitration – (1) there isn’t an agreement to arbitrate; (2) the agreement to arbitrate doesn’t cover it; (3) not agreeing to expand scope of agreement to arbitrate; and (4) don’t administratively close – dismiss. (Reverse if seeking arbitration)

General personal jurisdiction – don’t be that guy. Cite Daimler AG.

Pleadings – don’t get Twombly’d in the Iqbals. Plead every fact you can beg, borrow or steal to show that your allegations are sufficiently plausible.

If the bullet points don't make total sense, remember that only the live attendees get the benefit of the visuals of Judge and Rob (sadly, with arm hair curtains) explaining them. The next live presentation is in Dallas next month (for which I am course director this year, so if you're attending, behave yourself and say nice things on the evals), then Houston in October. But only the San Antonio site has real S'Mores and a lazy river.

Had a great time presenting "Technology and Productivity for the Practicing Attorney " for the Smith County Bar Association in Tyler last Friday. Covered the paperless office, equipment and useful apps for a law office, law office disaster plans, and personal productivity tips.

And just to reiterate, the one really killer app that I forgot to update the presentation with is Scannable, the new scanning program for smart phones by Evernote. You could see the lawyers who deal with documents in the real property records get excited when I told them they didn't need to make photocopies of pages they were interested in anymore.

The January issue of the Texas Bar Journal means another "Year in Review" where commentators around the state describe the important developments in numerous fields of practice during the previous year. The articles can be found here, and my summary of the year in patent litigation in Texas can be found at page 39. All of the issue's articles can be found here.

I returned from vacation this morning to find the latest issue of the State Bar Litigation Section's quarterly publication The Advocate in my in box.

This summer's symposium issue is Litigating in Federal Court, with my article "Picking the Court: Jurisdiction, Venue, Removal and Remand in Federal Court" leading off with a high level overview of the initial jousting over where the battle is to be fought. So if you're a member of the Section, enjoy your paper copy. There will eventually be an electronic copy available to Section members on our website (recently revamped) but it's not up just yet.

As is customary, the cover changes colors with each issue. This one is appropriately color coded to match Wright & Miller's encyclopedic Federal Practice and Procedure.

I am pleased to have been invited to be one of the keynote speakers at the 2013 Midwest Intellectual Property Institute, held on September 26 & 27, 2013 at the Minnesota CLE Conference Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Download 2013 MN CLE brochure

I will be presenting An Insider's Guide to the Eastern District of Texas, during which attendees have been assured I will "pull back the curtain on the Eastern District of Texas and reveal [my] best tips for litigators who practice there." Oh is that all?

I plan on incorporating parts of previous presentations and articles I've written on the history of the patent docket locally into the presentation for background, as well as information on recent developments, and "trends" using the statistical information Dave Maland produced for our seminar last month in New Mexico, and hopefully some tips as well. Several years ago I did a couple of State Bar seminars on intellectual property law for non-IP lawyers that had some Top 10 do's and don'ts that went over well, so those might be a starting point. Obviously this audience is sophisticated in IP practice, but there might still be some Texas or litigation-related tips I could share.

Well you have them now because I will be presenting Social Media Update via webinar tomorrow for the State Bar of Texas Paralegal Division. The cost is $40 for Paralegal Division members and $50 for nonmembers, and registration is here.

As the procedure is explained to me, I sit at my desk and talk on the phone for an hour while clicking through the slides for my presentation, which attendees can review my bio, my slides, and take notes. The audience is expected to be mostly certified paralegals, who are gaining credit in civil, criminal, family and personal injury law. The presentation will then be warehoused in the Paralegal Division's online CLE databank.

The presentation will be similar to the one I did in January at the State Bar Litigation Update seminar, but will contain a couple of sections I deleted this year for time reasons and because another speaker was handling them. So I am optimistic I can use most of the time before going to questions from the audience, which are sent by email during the presentation.

Week after next I will be presenting a paper Trial Procedure in Federal Court at the annual State Bar Federal Court Practice seminar. The seminar will be in its traditional home in Dallas, Cityplace Events Center on May 24, 2013. As readers know, I have presented on motion practice for several years now, but I ask to fleet up to trial procedure after running into some interesting issues with the trials we have had in recent years.

Also at the table with me will be U.S. Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne of Marshall, who will be providing attendees with his insights from almost 20 years on the federal bench, as well his his experiences trying cases as a practitioner.

The program will have numerous panels and individual presentations of interest to practitioners in federal court, including by Judge Reed O'Connor of the Northern District of Texas on pleadings, and will feature a lunch judges panel with Judge Payne and district judges Kathleen Cardone from El Paso, Diana Saldana of Laredo, and Jorge Solis of Dallas. More information on the seminar is available here, and you can register here or by calling the State Bar up directly at 800-204-222, extension 1574.

For anyone who's looking for some CLE credit this week, I am the lunch speaker on Thursday with a topic of Social Media Update at the State Bar's Litigation Update seminar this coming week at the Four Seasons in Las Colinas. (LC is actually part of Irving, which is better known as suburban Dallas). The brochure is attached here - Download 12 Liltigation Update

This paper was eating my lunch until I remember that we had done a special issue on social media in the Texas Bar Journal March before last, curated by John Browning of Dallas, who's also written a book on the subject, The Lawyer’s Guide to Social Networking: Understanding Social Media’s Impact on the Law (Thomson Reuters/West Publishing 2010). With John's work to refer to, as well as knowledge of some recent online misadventures in this small town I live in, I think I've come up with a presentation that just might be worth a listen. The subject is fascinating, and I've actually enjoying reviewing the recent cases and activity in the field.